Spy Tech

Everything looks different since Sept. 11, 2001. Trucking technologies first embraced for productivity are now being marketed as vital security safeguards. Vendors who first promised to save customers money now point to ways technology can fend off thieves and terrorists.

The turnabout is not new to Qualcomm. The San Diego-based mobile communications pioneer learned almost a decade ago that security is a benefit worth talking about when it approached truck fleets in Brazil with a modified version of its OmniTRACS satellite communications system. Brazilians were interested in satellite-based communications, sure, but they were more intrigued by how the system can protect their drivers, equipment, and freight from hijackers.

As a result, Qualcomm began to develop features like a dash-mounted panic button a driver can punch in an emergency and send a signal back to his dispatcher. It produced tamper-resistant hardware and looked for ways to use their communications system to disable vehicles. “In Brazil, they’ve been enhancing the basic system with add-ons to address security as the primary use of the OmniTRACS system,” says Marc Sands, vice-president and counsel for Qualcomm’s Wireless Business Solutions division. Such security features have become compulsory, Sands says. “In fact,” he adds, “if you don’t have this kind of system, you won’t get insured.”

Some of these functions have come to North America. Last month, Qualcomm introduced an option where the driver has to enter an ID and password in order to operate the vehicle. The login information is validated automatically through a wireless transmission that hooks up to a secure database at Qualcomm’s OmniTRACS network management centre. The company also rolled out a panic button drivers can activate by remote control.

ROUTING

Security begins with routing, according to Shel Greenberg, general manager of transportation data management for Rand McNally, another company that sees its products in a security context.

“You have to make sure the truck is routed on appropriate roads and around certain situations, obstacles, or structures that create a security problem or threat,” Greenberg explains. “You have to establish a route that makes sense and conforms to whatever restrictions you want to apply on a truck, for weight or hazardous materials or other such things.”

Once the truck is in motion, says Greenberg, it should be monitored. “Is it following the proper route or for some reason is it diverted? Is there a potential problem because of that?” he asks.

The answers can be provided by technologies like geo-fencing.

“Geo-fencing is an exception-based system,” explains Jerry Bokser, director of marketing at AirIQ, a fleet management system developer in Pickering, Ont. “It monitors a vehicle’s geographic location and alerts you when the vehicle goes someplace you don’t want it to be. We can send you an alert by e-mail, buzz your pager, or, if our system is connected with your dispatch software, we can notify you right there on screen.”

Geo-fencing isn’t just for preventing theft, says Jamie Williams, vice-president of Canadian operations for PeopleNet Communications, which will launch a geo-fencing feature for its fleet management system later this year. You can define prohibited roads and areas based on your own concerns, routing trucks with hazardous materials away from areas where they shouldn’t be and keeping them on routes designed to support those types of vehicles. The intensity of the vehicle tracking depends on the frequency with which the mobile communications or tracking system “pings” a truck, or asks it to report its position.

In most geo-fencing systems, the frequency of reporting can be increased in areas considered risky. “If there’s a problem, you want to know about it right away,” Williams says.

TAGS

Of technologies in the homeland security equation, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is the most likely to become a public policy concern. That’s because both public and private RFID networks are growing rapidly with little compatibility among them.

RFID involves electronic tags that can be read by transceivers and has always been associated with security. For example, RFID tags attached to retail merchandise and read by transceivers at store exits help prevent shoplifting.

In trucking, tags can be mounted on pallets or individual pieces of freight. Transceivers might be mounted at checkpoints in a warehouse or terminal to document the movement of goods. Or they might be mounted at freight doors to track loading and unloading.

A more immediate concern in a security context, however, involves using RFID to identify trucks and trailers in broader applications. For example, RFID underlies E-Zpass and other automated toll payment systems. RFID tags and readers enable the PrePass system to allows trucks already weighed and documented to bypass weigh stations further along a route. Although changes are in the works, transponders used by E-Zpass and PrePass aren’t compatible. Incompatibilities abound among other systems.

Yet according to Randy Burgess, RFID will be increasingly in demand to verify the identities of trucks and drivers. Burgess is director of global sales and marketing for Transcore’s CVO (Commercial Vehicle Operations) Fleet and Intermodal Transportation unit in Dallas, which provides RFID technology under the Amtech brand name. He says one area getting a lot of attention is the intermodal front: tracking the millions of containers worldwide and the hundreds of thousands being shuttled around North America. “We think there’s opportunity for, let’s say, problems,” Burgess says.

Transcore has deployed RFID for container tracking, chassis tracking, for identification of the power units, and even for identifying the drivers who come in to pick up loads and pass through regulated areas. The company has also supplied RFID for border crossing. “We’ve got a system in the trade corridor running from Tacoma, Wash., up to the Canadian border,” Burgess says. “We’ve implemented other technologies such as in-cab GPS, location devices, and wireless communications to track vehicles and containers.”

Burgess says the system that tracks equipment in and around Seattle-area port facilities and Canadian border crossings is the precursor to systems that will be encouraged if not mandated based on homeland security concerns. Burgess believes the U.S. government may act to impose standards. He hopes authorities will carefully weigh the impact of mandates on existing networks, and says wide deployment of RFID systems will offer benefits beyond security.

“By that I mean a lot of RFID installations have heretofore been put in place for the primary benefit of a relatively few stakeholders. If you look at asset management, for example, we use RFID at a truckload or LTL carrier to automate arrivals and dispatches by tagging dry vans, reefers, pups, tractors or whatever. That benefited their internal operation,” says Burgess.

“However if you look at weigh-station bypass and other broad-based initiatives, you’ll see benefits for everyone from regulators to truckers to the general motoring public.”